Sometimes I am a midde-aged, middle-class white guy grinding it out at the office each day and sometimes I am a toad that hops out onto the sidewalk after a summer rain.
Figuring out who Kev is, and the band, and Oprah, and me
Tonight I've been working on Little Kevin's college application, which is very interesting. Kevin, of course, has had some input into this, but since I'm the acknowledged writer of the family it generally falls to me to at least sketch out these kinds of official documents before others take a crack at it. The funny thing about these college apps is that they essentially ask you the same question over and over in different ways, and that question is: "Who do you think you are?" They do this is several forms, usually in limitations of 500 words. So I've had to answer questions such as "Elaborate on one of the activities you're involved in (250 words)." Then there's " Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence (500 words min.)", and then classic I'm struggling with tonight: "Select three words that describe you best and tell us how you will use these qualities/characteristics to contribute fully to the college community. " That's basically "Who are you" once again. My fire inclination, of course, was to answer Manny, Mo and Jack, and let it go at that. Naturally before I actually sat down to actually answer this Sphinx-like conundrum I consulted with Kev, asking him to give me three words he would use to describe himself. After telling me what a load of shit these questions are he could only muster two attributes - "funny" and "outgoing," neither of which i chose to use because they're too predictable. He also suggested "Tall, dark and handsome," which would cover all three, and i thought that was pretty funny, but I'm not so sure the wonks that read these things have much of a sense of humor. No sense taking chances on that. Anyway I'm multi-tasking right now, writing this here blog entry, writing kev's essay, and texting on FaceBook with my nephew who, btw, is flying in to see us on Christmas night.I wonder if one of his three key attributes on his college application is "timing?"Anyway as i write kev's application i was thinking about a comment number one son Sean made recently when i told him that Kev had just bought the new Call of Duty 2 video game that just came out for PS3. Sean the Chief, an acutely insightful young man said "sometimes I wish I was kev." Now i know why, and it's not because Kev is tall, dark and handsome. He's actually light-skinned.
So this weekend marked the return of our band Nation of 3 for a reunion show attended by millions across the world. Well actually it was more like 300 people who were actually at the venue, a firehouse in a place called Arcadia, Md, for a silent auction that was a fundraiser for a little boy La Sooze knows and cares about. It was actually ok despite my own personal doubts. I mean the band, THE BAND, hasn't played together in a couple of years probably and not that i thought that we would sound bad, but i was more afraid i would be bored and distracted with the whole thing. But really it was kind of cool. The set-up was that this was a silent auction where people just walk around and write bids on all kinds of stuff from super duper tool kits to vacation packages, and during the time they're working the numbers we played and played, doing our harmonies, making witht he jokes, playing a couple of covers,, an original, the usual. Oh and also there's food at this thing. As I mentioned earlier Lutheran old ladies run the kitchen for theis fundraiser and they made fried chicken which i adore because it was touched the veiny but loving hands of old Lutheran women, and pork which was cooked on the actual pig somewhere out behind the firehouse while we were not looking. The pork was quite good btw and the chicken was terrif. I ended up bringing home some of the chicken because possibly i was the only person there who appreciated its true value as love and comfort food, and at the end of the night one of the Lutheran ladies called me over in a clandestine voice and presented me with an entire box full of the stuff. Heaven. l took it home and ate a piece before I went to bed last night and then we all had some tonight. Little Kev, of course, hated it. He said it tasted like crap. Well of course he did. He's 17, much too young to appreciate the joy of a piece of chicken cooked in a firehouse by Lutheran women helping a handicapped child. Much too subtle yet for him
In recent news, I don't know what I'm more bummed out about - the forward motion of the creepy Health Care bill or the announcement last week that the Big O - the great Oprah, is going off the air and moving to the Discovery channel in like a year, as if we all needed a year to prepare ourselves. What will I do with my life? Seriously, the media covered this story as if it actually meant something. What saps we are. The gazillionaire culture queen is moving to a different channel and i actually saw a picture of her the other day on the internet getting all weepy as she made this announcement on her show, which btw I am proud to admit I have never, ever seen. Anyway, the media sells us so much entertainment and bullshit under the guise of news that it's quite maddening. The Big O will keep making her money, don't you worry, and we'll manage to stumble through our lives and figure out how to keep our houses uncluttered if we don't happen to get Discovery Channel on our cable. Meanwhile, there absolutely has to be something more important than this for me to occupy my head with, right? Please, please tell me there is.
Finally two short things. I'd mentioned to you awhile ago that a friend of mine who lives in Gettysburg, PA and is in a terrific band, had asked me to collaborate on some songs with him. Well this weekend he actually sent me some lyrics and a note saying he's recorded some music and sending that along to go with the lyrics and he wants me to give him some input on the words. How great is this? The hard part, of course, is messing around with someone else's words. I'm always a little nervous about that because I know how I can be about such things - sometimes when people screw with even one of my fabulous words it's like they're kicking me firmly in the ass, even if the words suck. It's an ego thing, y'know. Anyway this guy, Bill, is very cool and I think he and I have a good enough soul connection that we might actually pull this off. I'm kind of excited. maybe it will get me off my own writing dime where i have been sitting and pondering my navel for quite some time. (Btw as I write this I'm listening to the Dance of the Swans from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Great shit. I recommend it to you next time you're writing college applications and blogs simultaneously). Oh and lastly I'm thinking of taking the next couple of days off work. Last Friday I was looking at my paycheck and realized that i have like three weeks of vacation left and nowhere to go. So I'm thinking of taking a couple of days off this week since no one will be at work anyway and since i am only slightly more important to the business than the woman who carefully waters the plants in the office every other day. I actually want to spend a couple of days doing nothing, which is what i do anyway, only I don't want to feel guilty about it. This seems like a good opportunity. Right now I'm not bringing much to the table of life anyway and nobody really cares,so i may as well revel in it. It will give me something else to be thankful for on Thursday.
Tonight I left work at a little after 5:00 and it was dark already here in the East, that chilly November darkness that is both energizing and foreboding. It said to me that the grey, lifeless winter is coming to lock us up for what will seem like an eternity before it grudgingly lets go again. I could feel it.
You know this damp chill of course, having dug your own hands into your pockets for Baltimore winters years ago, scanning the grey skyline for something resembling spring. I have the fondest memories of us leaving work in winter and walking along frigid Lexington Avenue to find your car. We would drive to Catonsville once a month to run a poetry reading and we would always stop at that Chinese carryout next to the coffee shop where the reading was held. You would get a paper carton of vegetable fried rice and I would get something with meat in it and you would open the carton and it would steam and you would take in a forkful and say "good feed," and it was. The warm car, the poetry, the friendship.
Tonight when I walked out of work it was raining. Pouring, really. When I pushed through the revolving glass door of the office building and stepped toward the street there was a crowd of people in front of me huddled under the building's overhang. The rain fell in great grey sheets and fat drops tumbled one-by-one off the tall eaves above us, and the people just stood there fiddling with umbrellas or looking to the sky hoping the ugly rain would slow. It did not.
I looked at the sky too and was thinking about you. I had just read your blog before I left work and read about the guy you had connected with, Kevin Foley, the guy who wrote the Card Blue blog, the 37-year old guy who passed away today of Epithelioid Sarcoma, the same damn ugly cancer that won't seem to leave you be. I got on the Card Blue website after I read your notice and read the words his wife had written about him. I loved that she said he could cook and curse with great flair. It made me want to meet him, to hang out with him for a few hours and hear him rip off a blue streak just for the hell of it, just for being alive.
A couple of weeks ago I remember you had sent me an e-mail about him, about a note you and Kim had gotten from his wife. He had just been taken into hospice and she described to you that Sunday night, "knowing he would never be in bed with me again, watching ambulance guys strapping him in and taking him out of our home for the last time... you can imagine how painful..."
You recognized the poetry in thher pain, which is why you sent it to me. It is poetry because our lives are poems and each line is written sometimes carelessly, sometimes with great care. But in the end, you know, it all fits together, it all makes perfect sense.
I pulled up that e-mail you'd sent me today and read it again and felt badly because I had not written you back. It wasn't that I didn't want to, it was that I get lost sometimes in myself and forget about others, even dear friends with cancer thousands of miles away who think of me sometimes when they think of poems.
So tonight when I saw the rain I wanted to answer your note the only way I knew how. I hesitated only a moment at the front of the building, just long enough to see how hard the rain was falling. It was hard, complete. I couldn't just stand there. Not with Kevin Foley in my head and you in my heart. I couldn't worry that I would get wet and uncomfortable. How could I? Sometimes I think of rain as baptism, like it washes away my sins and I get a fresh start again and again. It is as if I am forgiven . Tonight I stepped out into the storm and walked, listening to music on my headphones. I think it was Deep Purple's Hush. It sounded right. I swear to you I walked right down the middle of the sidewalk, no hiding under eaves like some pussy. I sloshed through huge puddles. I took my time about getting good and drenched.
I miss you my friend. I should write more often. It shouldn't take the loss of another saint to the sarcoma to jolt me back, but this time it did. This time I walked in the rain for you because I grieve for Kevin Foley and his family but I do not grieve for you. You are alive and vital and fighting, and for today that's all that matters. I am grateful to you because you made me remember that. I am grateful that you are my friend.
So today I did something I have not done in probably 25 years or more. I asked the boss for a raise. Can you stand it? The last time I had to do something like this was when I was working at a weekly newspaper in the booming metropolis of Tipp City, Ohio and I was making like fast food restaurant money so I made an appointment with the publisher whose name, I shit you not, was Vernon, and he was a white-haired guy with a red face who talked like a character on Hee Haw. But the dude had a presence and a reputation as a tight ass and a prick, so when I went in his office and sat in the soft brown leather wing chair that day I knew I was going to get my ass kicked, but at the time I was like 22 and the money was so shitty I figured that if he fired me I could always get a job at the 7-11 and it would probably mean a raise. Anyway ol' Vernon told me that day that, and I'm quoting here, he'd "like ta give me a raise but the price of paper went up," and so apparently according to Vern, his business was teetering precariously on the brink of ruin and could not afford to reward me for my dedicated service to his newspaper. He ended up upping my massive salary by the amazing sum of 25 cents an hour. This is the same guy who, as a Christmas gift one year for the kids who delivered his newspapers, bought McDonald's gift certificates, and that American icon Mickey D's that year was giving away free Christmas ornaments with every was $10 worth of certificates you bought. These ornaments were the cheesiest shit you've ever seen, they were circles of fake gold and looked as if they'd been stamped out of Reynold's Wrap. So I guess ol' Vernon decided that since he had these terrific ornaments in bulk, he would use them, so he put one in the pay envelope of every employee of the company, except the paper carriers of course, who at least got a friggin' cheeseburger out of the deal. Anyway on payday I went out drinking with one of the guys who ran the newspaper press and we got quite intoxicated at a local bar and in our state of reverie we decided we were unworthy of such a special gift, and so we would return our ornaments to Vernon so he could give them to poor Ethiopian children who could make better use of them . Fortunately it was late by then and ol' Vern was probably home whippin' his wife with a cat 'o nine tail and so we had free access to his office. We took our terrific ornaments and bent them into pretzel shapes and placed them on Vernon's desk for his re-gifting purposes. In the process of bending this precious metal I also cut my finger and figured that was a sign, so I squeezed as much blood out of the little cut as I could , painting the papers on Vern's desk in dark the red drops of my drunken soul, just for good measure. Btw Vern never mentioned our symbolic ornament drop, but he also never gave out McDonald's Christmas ornaments again, at least not to us.
Today's raise begging was not such a traumatic experience and did not involve ornaments or white -haired Southerners. What little hair this boss man still possesses is still dark, and he no Vernon, I assure you. See the point is that I really like my job and I suspect that the boss guy is satisfied with me or he would have chased me out a long time ago. However, the problem is that I have not had a raise, a call-the-wife promotion in many a year. In fact I could not even tell you the last time that occurred. So today I went in and sat in the boss man's leather chair and told him that I thought maybe the time had come to promote me to something, anything, that I thought personally that I was doing a swell job and he should think that too and reward me with a few shekels and a boost of good old fashioned self-esteem. Now this is the guy I have referred to here as VA, the Visionless A'hole, mainly because he's the boss man and my rebel streak always causes me to lean in the direction of poking fun at anyone above me. that's just the way it works. To his credit, though, ol' VA was neither visionless nor an A'hole today. In fact he was actually nice, and while he did not give me a single shekel he did tell me how terrific he thinks I am and promised to look into some options that might make me a happier employee. I'll take it. Truth is, it felt good to just say it, to lay it on the table, as it were. The problem with these corporate jobs is that they're guided by corporate mentality, which means that the people who actually control the shekels make sure they get their fair share and the rest of the masses under them get to fight over the crumbs. I am not a fighter and so it is easy to ignore a schmuck like me; toss me a few bucks once a year and let me be. What do they care? But today at least I spoke up and I looked the dude in the eye and asked for a little sliver of the pie. The fact that I walked away hungry was not as important as the fact that at least I asked. At least I did that much.
So did I mention that the band - the me and la Sooze and our friend Uncle Dave band - is playing this weekend? The band btw is called Nation of Three and back in the day we used to play pretty regularly, like nearly every weekend for awhile, and we had a little fun with it, writing songs and learning new cover tunes and the like. But Dave, Uncle Dave, moved away and with him went our dreams of become middle-aged rock stars. But this weekend we are back together in a one night only reunion appearance at a fundraiser to make money for a little boy who is brain damaged and his parents have massive medical bills to cover. The big show is at a fire house somewhere near here and it part of a big raffle that goes on, and obviously Nation of 3 is only a very small part of this event but at least we are doing our part. Our only charge for the show is that we get to eat, which is terrific because the thing is run by a bunch of Lutheran women and I know from personal experience that Lutheran women may be quite white bread in their approach to most things in life but can they cook. I am already salivating like Pavlov's Dog in anticipation of the Lutheran fried chicken. Terrific stuff.
On a final note, as you know I just returned from Las Vegas and I pretty much couldn't stand the place. I bring this up because now I am planning a trip to Atlantic City, which is even cheesier than Las Vegas but is much closer to home. Why am I going to Atlantic City? I do not know. I am actually doing this as a goof for la Sooze's birthday, which is in December. We are planning to drive up tot he ol' AC and stay at a casino hotel and have a terrific dinner and play a little slot machines and maybe even see a show. La Sooze is not much of a gambler but the woman is lucky, and I have already told her I plan to pump money in a slot machine and then rub her head and let her go at it while I watch. We can split the massive earnings. Anyway I will keep you informed of these plans and also whether I figure out why of all places I suddenly have a terrific urge to go to Atlantic City. Maybe it is to spend the terrific raise that I did not get today. Oh well.
I just got home and it's 9:58 as in the PM, and you know how I am always treacherously tired because really, as a full-blooded American I am soooo busy all the time and thus I am soooo tired But really, this is legit. I mean I actually went to work this morning at like 8ish in the AM and I actually worked today and wrote a video script for a gigantic corporate big wig with wings of gold and I did lots of other stuff that no one in the world would possibly track, but I felt lucid again and like i was participating in the human race, a feeling I have not had for a little while.
Then this afternoon I got a call from a woman I work with who told me there was this community meeting being held by a state politician in a volunteer fire house in a scuzzy part of town and she didn't want to go because she is a known entity and they would be talking about stuff that could annoy the local residents who would show-up for this kind of thing and would I please go instead and sort of keep my mouth shut and report back on what these interested and participatory citizens of our country were talking about. It was kind of like I was a spy - Double Oh Kevin. I needed a wire taped to my hairless chest. Anyway I worked until like 5:30 and then took the train and got the White Accord and drove to scuzzytown and attended this meeting which was at the fire house in a big cinder block room painted some icky shade of off-white and they had little metal folding chairs set out and you could just tell this was a perfect location for a ham and bean fundraiser on any given Thursday night.
The really interesting thing about my clandestine little meeting tonight was watching these local politicians do their act. It's amazing really. Are all local politicians as sleazy and stupid and transparent as they are in Maryland? The dude who ran this thing was sooo dim-witted and he totally made a mockery of the English language and he made an hour-long presentation about all this pollution he thinks is going on in the local area and his point was basically that no one does anything about it including any of the local politicians. Of course I was sitting there shifting in my metal chair desperate to jump up and shout "um, aren't you a local politician?" but that would have broken with my spy persona for the evening so i just sat still and wished I had a phone in my shoe and wished that i could take a warm shower because the dude was creepy and slimy and made stuff up and the people around me were lapping it up like kittens at a plate of milk. Also there was another guy who helped this brilliant politician make his phony presentation and this guy is a wannabe politician who is running for something or other and the dude wore like a maroon shirt with a black tie and his hair was slicked back like Chase Utley and seriously, he looked like a small-time hood with a laser pointer instead of a piece. And i am wondering "who the hell votes for these people?" And i am also wondering "why the hell do these scuzzy guys want these political jobs so badly anyway?" I can't imagine working that hard and being that disingenuous just for the opportunity to talk to 30 people in folding metal chairs in the hall of a volunteer fire company. Maybe it's because all the people there agreed with him. I suppose there is power in this, in making shit up and finding people who will say "my God thank you for bringing that bullshit to my attention. Where would I be without you?"
Then on the way home tonight I had the radio on and I heard on the news that under our current prez the national debt has already risen more than $1 trillion, which is something even Bill Clinton couldn't accomplish in 8 years. No wonder i have no stomach for politics. Oh, and Sarah Palin is pissed because she's on the cover of Newsweek in running shorts and she wanted a better picture. Enough said about politics and politicians. I have little tolerance for toolbags which is why i stay away from this shit. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
So I didn't tell you that while I was in Vegas and Death valley I kept getting calls on my cellular telephone device from this guy I know and I did not answer them. I am awful. This guy, you see is someone I knew years ago from work, not like we were hanging out or anything but I knew him and liked him. Anyway he was pretty successful and left the company and i never heard from him again until a year ago when he called and confessed that he was having serious problems with drinking and his wife had left him and he was in bad shape. We spoke a few times and I tried to help him out and once he cried on the phone and I was deeply moved because I too have cried on phones over my own pain with alcohol. But last year this guy called and said he'd meet me and then he didn't and that kind of said something to me, and then he called me in Cali and left a message saying that a guy we both knew had passed away and he was wondering if i was going to the funeral, which i wasn't because this guy who passed was at a totally different pay grade than I am and he would not have noticed me even from heaven. Anyway even after leaving this seemingly benign message the guy kept calling and kept calling and I did not pick the phone up because if i thought he was in trouble I would happily help but obviously he was not, and was by then starting to creep in on possible stalking and i am not a huge fan of being stalked. So today he called again on my cell and i was on a call and so i ignored it, and then he called on my work phone and I felt like i had to eventually talk to him and so I answered. It was strange, really. He told me that he had ended up at a rehab back in June, the same rehab I went to, only he didn't sound like someone who was five months clean. He sounded strange and was alternating between laughing and choking up and was talking about Kareem Abdul Jabar and football games and pills and the whole thing was very strange. I could not tell what he wanted, if he was reaching out or weirded out or if he really was clean and wanted to share that with me. I just don't know. I finally told him i had to get off the phone and he said he would call me soon and we would go to a college basketball game together but I don't know if we will do that either. I mean, who am i to judge, but i just got an odd feeling and he never asked me for anything. I am a drunk, despite my years clean and sober, i am still a drunk at heart, and if another drunk asks me for help i will crawl across cut glass to help. No one understands a drunk like another drunk. No one. But drunks are as also as full of shit as anyone in the free world, and when they're hustling I want no parts of it. I felt like he was trying to hustle me today. I have no time for that, I can't, really. Tonight i will go to bed sober and i will whisper a prayer for my friend who called me so many times and then had nothing to say. I will pray that he eventually finds whatever the words are that he's looking for. And if one of those is "help" I'll be there for him in a New York minute.
Sorry, I didn't write last night, did I? Truth is I was tired. Truth is, yesterday, Sunday, was an absolutely gorgeous day powder blue sky and 70 degrees. I went to church at 8 am, and played in the terrific church band and then went out afterward to breakfast with most of the fam (sans Sean the Chief who is, of course, in Bahston). See my former brother-in-law, now friend Uncle Dave (UD) was in town with his daughter, my niece Jamie, and they were leaving so Daughter Shannon drove down from the ghetto hinterland of College Park, MD and along with the fab La Sooze and Little kev and aka Mema we all destroyed eggs and pancakes courtesy of Bob Evans. Down on the farm, dontcha know? Then, despite the fab weather, I returned to God View with a belly full of bacon and i looked out the louvered shutters in our bedroom out into the street and said "what a beautiful day," and then i grabbed a blanket and shut the shutters and promptly passed out for two hours. So much for taking advantage of the weather, I pulled the blanket up and blissfully went to a place where no one could find me.
See, in addition to the fact that I have figured out that I nap much better than i sleep, I was tired, i think, from the trip to Las Vegas and the fab Death Valley and fatigue always takes a day to catch up with me. Plus as i was sitting on the plane on Friday getting ready to leave The Entertainment Capital of the World I got an e-mail message from the person above me in the corporate chain, the person I call PAM (Person Above Me - clever, huh?) and she played her routine passive-aggressive game which is that she said in this note first "Hope your trip went well," and then followed with a cryptic and hostile "I want a full review of what you did on your trip on my desk at 9 am Monday," or something to that effect. Of course it bugged me. In fact, it kind of pissed me off for numerous reasons including the fact that I am an adult and a professional and she is essentially a clueless boob who takes no interest or action with regard to my job. Anyway, her weird little note ruined my whole trip, and I couldn't get it out of my head and even though i did not retire to the Country Squire until like 1 am on Friday i could not sleep and kept seeing Pam's boobish mug in my fitful dreams, which is not something you want to see. She reminds me of a middle-aged version of the girl who was the editor of the high school literary magazine who would act as if she were smarter and more insightful than everyone else in the room but would still have to buy a homecoming corsage for herself . Sad, but maddeningly annoying at the same time. I ended up resolving my own insecurities and obsessions over her note by sitting down on Sunday and making a complete list of every work project and bowel movement I had taken last week and sending it her on e-mail. Turns out she wasn't even at work this morning and would not have received my 9 am life justification if I had met her stringent specifications anyway. My God, who are these people and why are they in my reality?
So that little incident and being tired and being in phony Vegas has made me blue for some reason. Today I was just like depressed, i swear. I just can't seem to get it up for work right now. I wish sometimes I had a mindless job or a mindless soul so that I could just go to work at the same time everyday and leave at the same time and have no paranoia or guilt or even thought about what I'm doing or why or what anyone thinks of me or doesn't. But I can't. This is the curse of being a poet in an office environment. It is all very shallow and obvious, the people who are working scared and the people who are trying to cut your nuts off and the people who are slowly oozing their way into jobs that are much better than yours and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. My problem is that I see all this and I take it heart, though not because I am trying to maneuver myself into anything, but because I am wired this way. Today I walked out of my office and this woman was there talking to one of the big wigs, and this woman takes all this work stuff very seriously and probably writes her shopping list in an Excel spreadsheet, and when i walked out she said to me "oh it's all his fault, the bad communications we have here," and she said it as if it was a ha ha ha moment, but I kind of felt like I had happened to walk out while she was talking some shit on me and she covered it over with a lame attempt at humor. It wasn't funny. It made my poet ache, and I wanted to tell her to shut up and go home and take up watercolor painting for a hobby, but I didn't. You can never be honest at work. I laughed a phony laugh and went and got a cup of free coffee and felt my blue get bluer. I've either got to stop thinking and letting this shit bother me or just lunge across a desk and pound someone stupid because this middle of the road stuff is wearing me out.
Oh speaking of which, I got an e-mail today from Bob Wintershoe in Connecticut. Bob is still very interested in me and promised me I will make it to the next cut but unfortunately the next cut has been delayed by budget issues and may not come for awhile. My life story. This actually might be fortuitous because the way I am feeling right now i would run into the arms of any Bob Wintershoe with a $10 bill and wry a smile just to get out of my current situation. I swear, i would commute daily 300 miles to Connecticut to get away from PAM and tools like the Excel Spreadsheet Scarecrow. Please, someone spare me.
So tonight me and La Sooze actually engaged in a creative endeavor together. I think I told you that I've been asked to a do a poetry reading in January as part of a new poetry series being started up by a woman i know and like and respect. She asked me because years ago I used to read in another series she ran and La Sooze read too and sang with me sometimes, and besides La Sooze is a mover and a sharer unlike me, who is a whiner and schvitzer. Anyway we went to the planning meeting tonight for this reading and there were all these people, poets and artists, who I knew and have not seen in a long time because i long ago gave up on poetry because I got tired of my own voice and the voices of others like me desperate for someone to tell them how smart they were. So this one woman comes in, a poet, and she hugs me and says "you've gotten so skinny" which I suppose is better than "you have blown up like an overfilled helium balloon," but it still made me feel as if i were fighting the consumption.
So after a blue, blue day like this I was coming home tonight on the subway, the only place I really think anymore, and I was listening to my trusted I-pod and this song comes on and i did not want to hear it. See with the I-pod I just flip through songs until I hear something that seems to fit my mood at that moment. Otherwise I am like a 5-year old with a television remote. So this song pops on and I don't want to hear it, but something says to me, don't turn it off and i don't and it is a church song that the church band plays sometimes from a band called "Casting Crowns" called Who Am I and the words are terrific and in the darkening November skies outside the train I listen to it and really hear it, and it's stuck in my head as I get in the car still blue, but thinking, at least thinking, that someone out there, or up there more like it, actually gets me:
